Jen Schiller

Last year, Microsoft bought a company called Canesta. Canesta, a gesture-recognition company, is the way to the future.

The company is responsible for the software that might power the next generation of Kinect, the Xbox 360's motion control accessory. Because they're creating hardware that's smaller and faster than Kinect's current tech, PrimeSense's PrimeSensor, this makes way for all sorts of futuristic ideas.

Canesta has created a system-on-a-chip processor that does what the much larger Kinect does—recognize and interpret movement—but it can do so in a device that's about 1/26th the size.

Advertisement

Such a small gesture-recognition device could be implanted into the next generation of smartphones, which will be powerful enough to run software that could control robotics much bigger than the phone itself. Kevin Tofel explains in his article on GigaOM: "if Microsoft can shrink the system down for use in handsets, you may carry your smartphone during the day, but dock it in a mobile robot for use at home during the night."